TraceRt on Videosift.com
Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed. It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut. A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily. Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.
- BBCNews
So what does a TraceRt from Kuwait look like for Videosift.com?
Makes you realize how fragile the physical connectivity of the Internet really is... check out this map put out by Telegeography of the Internet 2009.
One fun fact from that Internet map is that 45% of traffic is web and 25% is P2P!
Tracing route to www.videosift.com
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 53 ms 99 ms 100 ms dsldevice.lan
2 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 62.150.xxx
3 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 62.150.xxx
4 10 ms 10 ms 9 ms jun-skb.qualitynet.net
5 334 ms 377 ms 421 ms if-14-3.core1.RSD-Riyad.as6453.net
6 1044 ms * 488 ms if-13-1-1.core1.S9R-Singapore.as6453.net
7 490 ms 490 ms * if-15-0-0-953.core2.S9R-Singapore.as6453.net
8 661 ms 624 ms 616 ms if-14-0-0-954.core1.TV2-Tokyo.as6453.net
9 * 678 ms * if-0-0-0-736.mcore3.LAA-LosAngeles.as6453.net
10 692 ms 693 ms 693 ms 0.so-0-0-0.BR2.LAX7.ALTER.NET
11 * 679 ms 680 ms 0.so-2-2-0.XT1.LAX7.ALTER.NET
12 693 ms * 695 ms 0.so-2-0-0.XL1.SDG2.ALTER.NET
13 699 ms * * POS6-0.GW1.SDG2.ALTER.NET
14 * 702 ms 702 ms castleaccess-gw.customer.alter.net
15 687 ms * 690 ms ge1-1-6509-a.castleaccess.com
16 691 ms * 692 ms 69.43.138.12
17 691 ms * * 69-55-231-118.in-addr.arpa.johncompanies.com
18 * 689 ms 689 ms 69-55-231-118.in-addr.arpa.johncompanies.com
Trace complete.
You read that right. The internet has been rerouted, so it goes from Kuwait - Riyad - Singapore - Tokyo - LA to the VS servers in 18 hops! Suprisingly this is not as bad as www.google.com
Tracing route to www.l.google.com
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 47 ms 99 ms 99 ms dsldevice.lan
2 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms 62.150.xxx
3 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms 62.150.xxx
4 9 ms 10 ms 10 ms jun-skb.qualitynet.net
5 43 ms 43 ms 42 ms if-14-3.core1.RSD-Riyad.as6453.net
6 488 ms 489 ms 488 ms if-13-1-1.core1.S9R-Singapore.as6453.net
7 479 ms 480 ms 479 ms if-11-0-0-735.core2.S9R-Singapore.as6453.net
8 562 ms 562 ms 562 ms if-14-0-0-954.core1.TV2-Tokyo.as6453.net
9 675 ms 674 ms 674 ms if-6-0-0-737.mcore4.LAA-LosAngeles.as6453.net
10 679 ms * 676 ms Vlan77.icore1.LAA-LosAngeles.as6453.net
11 670 ms 674 ms 723 ms 4.68.63.65
12 676 ms 685 ms 672 ms vlan79.csw2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net
13 693 ms * 692 ms ae-73-73.ebr3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net
14 * 754 ms 765 ms ae-4.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net
15 766 ms 757 ms 758 ms ae-74-74.csw2.Washington1.Level3.net
16 * 755 ms 755 ms ae-72-72.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net
17 903 ms 903 ms 902 ms ae-43-43.ebr2.Paris1.Level3.net
18 * 832 ms 831 ms ae-2-2.ebr1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net
19 910 ms 903 ms 903 ms ae-81-81.csw3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net
20 956 ms 962 ms 912 ms ae-3-89.edge3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net
21 907 ms 907 ms 907 ms 212.162.24.14
22 912 ms 934 ms * 209.85.249.178
23 908 ms 908 ms 848 ms 209.85.254.112
24 834 ms 832 ms 923 ms 209.85.254.126
25 831 ms 830 ms 830 ms fx-in-f99.google.com
Trace complete.
It goes from Kuwait - Riyad - Singapore - Tokyo - LA - Washington - Frankfurt - L Servers Google in 25 Hops. Basically it goes around the world to reach Europe!
They said it will be fixed by 31st December 2008. This is the second time this year this has happened.
5 Comments
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Ouch. Wasn't the CIA behind those cable cuts?
Farhad2000Well I doubt so, but I am fairly surprised that so many lines got cut in one incident. Why don't they separate the lines anyway?
Alot of commentators are saying there will be wide ranging economic repercussion, because of the major work that is reliant on internet business and telephony in the middle east and south east Asia.
KrupoMy phone lines got cut this year too. I suspect the same anti-Liberal haters.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Maybe not the CIA. Maybe the MPAA/RIAA. Just as evil.
xxovercastxxSo a significant number of international connections were cut. Connectivity has been maintained, albeit in a less efficient manner than previously, and you see this as fragile?
I'm rather impressed, actually. As the net has moved farther from military project and closer to advertising delivery network it's often been at the cost of redundancy. I wouldn't have expected the lost connections to be handled so well.
Discuss...
Enable JavaScript to submit a comment.